This course is Part 2 of the Social Norms, Social Change series. In this course, we will examine social change, the tools we may use to enact change, and put into practice all we have learned in Part 1. See Social Norms, Social Change Part I at this link: https://coursera.org/learn/norms
This course covers scripts and schemas, the cognitive structures in which social expectations are embedded, and their relationship with social norms. The course then examines the essentials of norm abandonment, including the relations between personal beliefs and social expectations. We will also evaluate existing intervention strategies, including legal reforms, information campaigns, economic incentives, and group deliberations. Finally, we look at a variety of tools policy makers may use to effect change, highlight the role of trendsetters in social change, and explore the conditions under which they can be successful. The course is a joint Penn-UNICEF project."
Please see the following link for a 30% discount on the book that accompanies this course:
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/9780190622053/?cc=us&lang=en&promocode=AAFLYG6

Taught By

Cristina Bicchieri

Transcript

[MUSIC] I said that script and schemas include social norms. These are the places our social expectation come from. In a particular culture, the woman schema will include a series of roles. Wife, mother, daughter, for example. And associated behaviors and roles or scripts. The content of these roles is socially shared and quite resistant to change. Let us take a step back and ask, what sort of process leads us to go from consistently observing that people fill particular roles to expecting their persistence and believing that people should fulfill those roles? In other words, how do we form our schematic gender knowledge and when it becomes prescriptive? The observation of recurrent patterns of behavior, for example, observing men and women consistently filling specific roles, leads us to perceive these roles as projectable regularities. What does it mean? We form empirical expectations. That is, we expect men and women to continue behaving according to these specific roles also in the future. In this way, we develop a schema. As we will form a prototypical idea of what a woman, how she behaves, what character or skills she has. Unless we face significant challenges to this idea, it will become very stable. Once a schema has become stable, the associated behavior will come to be seen not just as common and typical but also as right and appropriate. As a schema stabilizes, the associated scripts become prescriptive. The behavior comes to be seen as right and appropriate. And we come to develop normative expectations. And so, from empirical expectations that are always met, we come to form schemas. And from our schemas and scripts, we develop our normative expectation. In time, we come to believe that women should display certain characteristics, should behave in particular ways, and fulfill specific roles. Let me stress that appropriate behaviors are the elements of a script that are tied to social norms. Empirical expectation inform us of what people usually do and expect us to do. And normative expectation inform us of what people think we should do. In other words, these expectation help shape the strength of how prescriptive a scripted set of behavior is. Without empirical or normative expectation, a script could be seen as a sequence of actions in which one could and typically does engage with the presence of the necessary empirical and normative expectation. The same script, in the same situation, becomes a sequence of action in which one should and typically does engage. Imagine a tradition of culture that has developed a good wife schema. A good wife is expected to take care of her husband, obey and respect him, have children, take care of them, and so on. These are all scripted behaviors that are normally expected, but suppose that some are violated. If a violation is not due an acceptable cause, for example, the woman was sick or something very serious unexpectedly happened, that breach of the rule will elicit a negative causal attribution. She did not perform her duty, because she's rebellious. She is disrespectful or mean. So a script violation, or a norm violation, will bring forth a negative judgement. Normative expectation have been spurned. She should have done such and such thing but she did not. And since normative expectation are perceived to be legitimate, anger is the normal and appropriate emotion triggered by transgressive behavior. Norm violation triggers anger, and anger usually provokes punishment. In a very traditional society, a husband may think that punishment is the right response. Possibly, even his duty. It is his duty as a husband to discipline his wife. Unfortunately, in society where domestic violence is quite common, such violence is the response to a violation to establish gender norms. Norm violation make give men permission to punish wives or daughters in ways that may be extremely harsh, think of honor killing. If we want to eliminate domestic violence, we have to be aware of the social shared schemes and norms that identify a good wife or a good daughter. Changing the schema, or at least part of it, is necessary if we want to change common and harmful behaviors. >> When we talk about domestic violence, people think about things like alcoholism or poverty as being the root cause of this issue. And these are definitely contributing factors, but really, when we think about the root cause, what is underlying all this, we can see that it's actually an imbalance in power between males and females that's present in different ways, in different societies. And that this is somehow leading to many types of violence, including domestic violence. The work that I'm engaged in now, we're looking particularly at adolescence as a time when norms around gender are being formed. So these ideas of, what does it mean to be a good husband? Or what does it mean to be a man? Or what does it mean to be a good wife, or a woman, or what does it mean to be a good partner for people in any kind of relationship? In some places, it may be very clear that this man is thought of as less than a man if he doesn't do that. But I think this would be something that's really interesting to look into. For whatever you're setting you're working in, how do men feel about not following that norm and letting other people know that they're not following that norm?

Explore our Catalog

Join for free and get personalized recommendations, updates and offers.